Maintaining a healthy work-life balance can be difficult in today’s culture that celebrates being always on. In fact, 94 percent of 1,000 professionals surveyed by the Harvard Business Review said they put in 50 or more hours a week at work. What’s more, nearly half that group clocked in more than 65 hours a week.
In today’s always on workplace culture, where employees are rewarded and oftentimes expected to work long hours and communicate continuously, balance can be hard to find. In fact, more and more people are prioritizing work over their personal lives, tipping the scales toward burnout and stress.
Work-life balance has been around for a lot longer than the Millennial generation. Despite their focus on creating better work-life balance, the term has been in use since the 80’s.
Someone once said “Life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re going to get.” Okay, well, it was the sage wisdom of Mrs. Gump, but regardless, it’s a great metaphor for how unpredictable life can be. Sometimes it leaves a bad taste in your mouth, sometimes it’s disappointing, and other times it’s so incredible you need to stop and savor the moment because you know that it’s fleeting. This rings true in every facet of our day-to-day, especially in professional settings. There is so much that is beyond our control, so how we approach life directly impacts our work attitude and how we navigate our workday.
While there are many approaches, there are 4 that have a big impact on success.
We all have these items on our to do list. We all want to be in tune with our work, harmonize with our team, and love what we do. Conversely, we need the resources to experience the adventures modernity has to offer. Traveling, city breaks, amazing escapes, meeting people, reinventing, and rediscovering oneself. Hence, our bucket list.
Yet, there is one key element that affects our existence. Our most valuable resource: time. And for some reason, most of us spend almost 1/3 of our lives sleeping. And those that don’t, should. Balance work and life through better sleep to be productive, stay passionate, and get into focus.
Micro-goals are a novel concept in strategy. They allow a tactical segmentation of organizational plans. In a sense, it’s like re-creating your organization at a micro-scale.
Micro-goals are a way for your organization to learn. You use them to determine what outcomes are achievable by a small, very special, task force. Then you measure the progress of such a team and learn as much as you can.
My coworkers and I rely on instant communication apps to give and receive feedback, keep ourselves up to date with the projects we’re working on, and talk to friends and family. As useful as IM apps are, they can be overwhelming sometimes. Over time, we learned a few tricks on how to avoid distractions when using IM apps so I thought we’d share them here, on our blog.
Image Credit: Thomas Lefebvre (Unsplash.com)